Content Warning: This story references death by suicide and physical and sexual abuse and depicts attempted sexual assault.

The story alternates between three inner monologues, the first of which belongs to 14-year-old Alison Pope. Alison descends her family’s staircase while imagining a series of princely admirers, none of whom can avoid embarrassing malapropisms in describing her beauty. She is waiting for her mother to get home and take her to ballet class. She practices her moves and thinks of all the things she loves—her teacher Ms. C, the girls in class, and her home and community. While dancing around the house, she imagines a baby deer and protects it from the news that its mother has been killed by a hunter. She considers who she might be romantically involved with, referring to her potential suitors as “{special one}” and rejecting various boys she knows because “What she liked was being in charge of her. Her body, her mind. Her thoughts, her career, her future” (6).

While considering all the things she doesn’t know, she sees Kyle Boot, her teenage neighbor, jogging up the street in nothing but running shorts. She pities him as a “poor goof” who doesn’t have many friends in part because of his parents’ strict rules.